Collaboration Chronicles

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This is a compilation of the videos I took last Tuesday. If you’d like to know how I made the beer, check it out!

I thought I would include the recipe for this beer as well. Here it is!

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This Tuesday, I’m going to be brewing a Belgian style golden ale. This is part of a workshop series that we’re still formulating, but which will focus on

survivalism and green design/manufacturing. The first few workshops will focus on being self sufficient and making things from scratch.

If you’re interested in learning how to make beer, or just want to take part, stop by my house at 6:30pm or after this Tuesday.

If you want to reserve a couple bottles, sign up for our mailing list, or leave a donation using the link on our home page.

See you there!

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Last night was the first return Workshop Wednesday after a long

hiatus. My friend, Jeremy, and I ate bread, cheese, shawarma and homemade salsa with chips while we worked together on software for a couple hours at my house.

Jeremy is an mechanical engineer. We share the same day job. He has an iPhone app that is on the iPhone Store, but it’s not doing well mainly due to the plethora of bugs and his unwillingness to update. He’s moved onto better things. Like what we worked on last night. I haven’t spent much time with the iPhone development environment (XCode) or Objective C programming, but the syntax is somewhat familiar. It’s like a cross between ActionScript and C++. Needless to say, I was able to clear up some of the important parts of his code quickly and get what he wanted. The result was a program that echoed back through the speakers whatever came in through the microphone.

We spent more than half of the time talking about the reasons to use threads and how to use them properly. We did this while talking about what we were going to do next on this project. I can’t wait for the next Workshop Wednesday so that we can start writing some real code for the ideas we keep spouting out on paper, and the prototypes we keep making in Flash.

If you have something to work on, but need some inspiration or just people to work around, stop by at our next Workshop Wednesday. This is an incubation program for propagating our ideas and inspiring new ideas.

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It was right there on the website, beckoning me to buy. It was an item I could really use for my business. But the site wouldn’t take my order because I

didn’t have an address inside the country.

This was a common problem I had been working around for some time. It’s one that benefits me, when people buy from me, but costs me when I have to buy from an alternate source or just forget it.

There are international re-mailing services. They almost all seem to work by yearly subscription, with a few you can try for a month. Nobody seemed to do remailing per item. Their customer base seems to be retired people browning their butts in the sun, sailing around on yachts and picking up mail once a month or so- far from an efficiency-based service.

“Isn’t it nice to be lazy, Myrtle? Let’s have another julep! hohoho!” – adorable retirees.

I tried one monthly service and had a comical series of accidents and failures. Some were on my part (time demands), but most were theirs. Lost email, mishandled requests, but mostly no service, no response. There was no automated process for receiving then shipping out mail- they did it all by email request (with no confirmation). I even sent them a suggestion plus .jpg sketch for how to organize it with a form, something to refer back to and keep on record for a user account. I promised that it would lead me to pay for more use if they did, and told them I know a software engineer and some designers… that usually doesn’t lead anywhere, but if it does you might have a business opportunity for each other. The failures continued. I got fed up and sent an ALL CAPS message asking, where’s my stuff? They finally responded- to demand an apology for shouting. That earned them my best write-up on the shady yet useful site, ripoffreport.com, a catch-all lint trap for disgruntlement… it mentioned people farting around in their bathrobes in front of the telly with tea and crumpets, while your mail gathers dust and your meter runs out.

I figured that my need (which was occasional and unpredictable) would best be helped by a friend in that country willing to do favors, and I would be happy to pay them. I found someone willing, but the next time I got in touch to make the deal, they had moved back to the states.

I tried posting on several forums dedicated to sellers and shippers. They responded with suspicion or indifference.

For a while, I had been successful with approaching individual sellers (as opposed to companies) to ship wares they were already selling that I wanted overseas to me, when they hadn’t enabled that option. This led to inspiration.

The next time I did this, I explained the problem and asked the seller if they could receive another package and ship both together. I asked to do these steps:
1) I pay for the item I bought from them.
2) They receive another shipment, have 2 items/1 payment, and ship both to me.
3) On receipt, I pay balance for the extra remailing postage, plus a tip for the favor.

It’s like working by contract with mutual trust- Client pays an upfront retainer, I do the labor, then I get the 2nd half payment.

Both sellers I asked were enthusiastic, problem solved. There’s risk, but a good part of it is covered. Maybe I can even get a helper to do it regularly. Just asking on forums didn’t work to make that relationship, but buying something did.

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I miss making giant posts on here like the one about the abandoned storage auction. I gave up this summer because I w

as busy and got into other things.

That describes my commitment to Collab21 as well. I moved to San Francisco 2 years ago and had a list of needs. C21 seemed like a possible way to fill them. As a self employed animation artist and book dealer, I needed space… an occupation outside of the house… collaboration and inspiration. It seems like I have filled most of those needs on my own. I also have gotten to know a little more about the renting/owning/property situation around here and how complicated and unrealistic it is… I don’t think it’s very commercially viable for a company to rent space here without being at the top of the list as a provider of whatever service it does. Unless it’s something extremely locally based (haircuts don’t get made overseas.) It’s just so frickin’ expensive here.

I’m currently a C21 member and I want it to succeed and to move into a space. Meanwhile I’m here on a low level and watching to see if things will come together with the right opportunities.

My own personal endeavours are going great. This summer I began making an independent film which used some collaborative help to get started and now it’s all me. It’s coming along and will probably wrap around december, after which I will be promoting and sending it to film festivals and totally remaking my art portfolio website, http://patsanimation.com which I haven’t updated in a long time. If you’re reading and aren’t a facebook friend with me, Ben, Dave, etc… I encourage you to find us. http://www.facebook.com/misterfang

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Collab21′s wheels have been rusted for a long time now. I just applied some WD-40 and have ordered some grease to repack the bearings.

Our renewed fo

cus is going to be on reaching short term goals rather than our current main goal of moving into a space. Some of these short-term goals are a result of a question posed to me by a principle of the company I work for, “Say you get a space, what are you going to do in it?”

I responded, “I have a prioritized list of 1000s of things.”

“Do those.”

Ideally, I would have a prioritized list of 1000s things to do. In reality, the list is closer to 50. Some of the things on the list actually require having a space, a kitchen, whiteboards, microphones, computers, etc. So I had to eliminate most of the ideas as post-space goals. Of the ones leftover, there were a couple that really stuck out to me:

1. workshops/classes/collaborative work sessions, and
2. Video podcasting

I’ve been working on re-designing our WordPress theme to fit with the palette of our company’s website, with the idea that it will be the primary site, but will park on top of this one. Ultimately, this will be our primary website.

One of the WordPress Plugins I added is called Gigs Calendar, which is designed to be used for displaying a list of upcoming gigs for band websites. It was the best calendar I found for free (leave suggestions for others in the comments).

I’ve so far only set up two events. One is a learn to make beer class, the other is collaborative and will be ongoing from now on. My idea of video podcasting is to film the classes, edit them a bit and post them on the blog for free. There will be a list of all classes on a separate page. I think this will be a great benefit for Collab21.com and for the community. Most of the topics I want to have classes on are passions of mine. I’m sure these will inspire more as time goes on.

Jesus teaches survivalism through parables

Finally, I’d like to announce that there will be an ongoing theme of our classes/workshops, which will be roughly related to survivalism. Call it self-sufficiency or life fundamentalism, it’s learning how to take care of your basic needs with limited or basic resources. I live in a city that’s obsessed with local food and I think that is a good thing. People are looking back at their roots. Farming is what made it possible for us to not have to hunt and gather. Our country has for too many years been separated from the things that sustain our lives. Things like water quality, food production, soil, air quality and shelter are extremely broad topics, and it’s few and far between when I meet someone who can speak to all of these things. Our goal is to learn and teach about topics that will change this.